Four American and European cyclists have been run down and killed by a car in Tajikistan in what authorities said could be a terrorist attack. Two cyclists from the United States and one each from Switzerland and the Netherlands were killed in the incident on Sunday in the Danghara district near the border with Afghanistan. The men in the car then attacked the survivors with knives and guns, the interior ministry said. Three bikers from Switzerland, the Netherlands and France suffered injuries including stab wounds. “We are looking at versions that this was an accident, armed robbery, murder. The version of a terrorist act is also not being excluded,” interior minister Ramazon Rakhimzoda told journalists on Monday. At least one suspected attacker was killed while resisting arrest and at least one other was detained, the interior ministry said. A video reportedly taken at the scene showed what appeared to be the attackers' car turn around, accelerate and hit one of the fallen cyclists. A photograph showed a man receiving first aid next to another man lying on the ground. This video reportedly from the scene of the attack that killed 4 American & European cyclists in Tajikistan appears to show the car drive back around to hit one of them lying on the road @RFERLhttps://t.co/MwO03z3Url— Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) July 30, 2018 President Emomali Rakhmon, whose hometown is near the site of the attack, expressed his condolences to the leaders of the United States, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Tajikistan has suffered from Islamic extremism in the past. At least 17 people were killed in 2015 when armed groups led by a deputy defence minister attacked police stations and an airport following the outlawing of the country's only Islamic political party. Hundreds of Tajiks left to fight with Isil in the Middle East, including the US-trained commander of the interior ministry's special forces. Drug smugglers and terrorists have often hidden in the mountains of the mostly Muslim, impoverished former Soviet republic, which suffered a civil war in the 1990s but is now trying to increase tourism. One of these groups, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, fought US forces in Afghanistan as an ally of al-Qaeda and the Taliban and later pledged allegiance to Isil. Central Asia is an enticing but sometimes dangerous destination for adventure travellers. Rock climbing legend Tommy Caldwell and three other Americans were captured by Islamic militants just over the Kyrgyzstan border in 2000, an ordeal that only ended after Mr Caldwell pushed one of the hostage-takers off a 2,000-foot mountain.

A strong quake hit western Japan early Monday, but there were no immediate reports of major damage or risk of tsunami waves, officials said. The 5.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 15.4 kilometres (10 miles) at 7:58 am (2258 GMT Sunday) near Osaka, according to the United States Geological Survey. There was no risk of tsunami from the tremor, the Japanese meteorological agency said, putting its magnitude at 5.9, and the epicentre at a depth of 10 kilometres.

SYDNEY/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Didi Chuxing Technology Co Ltd, the Chinese ride-sharing company that bought the mainland operations of Uber Technologies Inc, will begin offering its service this month in Australia, its first foray in a Western-style country. The scheduled June 25 launch in Australia’s second biggest city Melbourne sets Didi up for a showdown with the U.S. rival it bought out in China in exchange for a stake. Didi started expanding outside Asia in Mexico earlier this year, and has said globalisation is a core strategy.

A war monitor said buses evacuated Islamic State fighters from an enclave south of Damascus on Sunday in a withdrawal deal, though state media denied the report and said the Syrian army was fighting to finish off the insurgents. The recovery of the enclave south of Damascus will mark another milestone in President Bashar al-Assad's war effort, crushing the last besieged rebel enclave in western Syria. Swathes of territory at the borders with Iraq, Turkey and Jordan, however, remain outside state control. Syrian government forces and their allies have been battling to recover the enclave south of Damascus since defeating rebels in eastern Ghouta, also near the capital, in April. The area is centred around the al-Hajar al-Aswad district and the adjoining Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. In a live broadcast, a reporter with Syrian state TV said the Syrian army operations in the Hajar al-Aswad area were nearing their end and insurgent lines were collapsing as columns of smoke rose from the area behind him. Smoke billowing from the Palestinian camp of Yarmouk during regime strikes targeting the Islamic State group in the camp Credit: Stringer/AFP The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier said buses had entered the enclave after midnight to take out fighters and their families. They had left towards the Syrian Badia, a sparsely populated expanse of territory east of the capital that extends to the border with Jordan and Iraq, it said. Islamic State militants had torched their offices in the Yarmouk enclave, the Observatory said. Negotiated withdrawals have been a common feature of the Syrian war in recent years as the government, aided by the Russian military and Iran-backed forces, has steadily clawed back territory. The rebels have mostly been given safe passage to northwestern Syria. In the last two months alone, the United Nations says 110,000 people have been evacuated to northwestern Syria and rebel-held areas north of Aleppo. Syrian president Bashar Assad meets Vladimir Putin for talks in Sochi on May 17 Credit: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP The opposition has called it a policy of forced displacement amounting to demographic change to drive out Assad's opponents. The Syrian government has said nobody is forced to leave and those who stay must accept state rule. While Assad has vowed to win back "every inch" of Syria, the map of the conflict suggests a more complicated time ahead from now on. The U.S. military is in much of the east and northeast, which is controlled by Kurdish groups that want autonomy from Damascus. It has used force to defend the territory from pro-Assad forces. Turkey has sent forces into the northwest to counter those same Kurdish groups, carving out a buffer zone where anti-Assad rebels have regrouped. In the southwest, where rebels hold territory at the Israeli and Jordanian border, Assad faces the risk of conflict with Israel, which wants his Iranian-backed allies kept well away from the frontier and has mounted air strikes in Syria.

Hail and rain storms knocked down power poles and uprooted trees, killing at least 78 people in northern and western India, government officials said on Thursday. Thirty-three people were killed on Wednesday in the western desert state of Rajasthan and 45 in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, authorities said. “We experienced a fierce storm, with an unusually high wind speed, and as a result, 33 people died in Alwar, Dholpur and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan,” Hemant Gera, responsible for relief and disaster management in Rajasthan, told Reuters by phone from Jaipur, the state capital.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Sunday that further Western missile strikes on Syria would lead to chaos in international relations, Russian news agencies cited the Kremlin as saying. Putin and Rouhani spoke by phone to discuss the situation in Syria after the United States, France and Britain launched missile strikes on the country over a suspected poison gas attack.